25 Days of Gifts: Cyber Monday

Time to buckle down and get ready for Christmas. I’ve got a great series planned to give you different gift ideas every day this month.

For Day 1, we are embarking on a journey to find the best deals online on this Cyber Monday.

If you decided to stay in bed Black Friday morning, like I did, then today is the day to get your deals of the season. Cyber Monday is a great day to get a lot of the things like toys/books/games that I know I need, but don’t want to battle traffic and lines to get them.

Your best deals today are going to be on:

Toys
Appliances
Shoes
Travel
Electronics

It kind of seems like everything is on sale today, right? That’s probably because almost everything is. It can be a chore to wade through all the deals to figure out what to buy, so my game plan is to tackle it the same way I do Marshalls or TJ Maxx – you have to know what you want before you start looking. I don’t just go into one of those stores to browse, or I will get overwhelmed and end up leaving with nothing. If I go in looking for an embellished sweater to wear with my black skirt, I’m much more successful.

So it is with Cyber Monday, especially with electronics. I have been in the market for a new camera for a while now. Instead of shopping the ads, I did a lot of research to decide which one I wanted, then searched for the best deal on that camera. I found that it is on sale (yay!) but the discounted amount is the same on every site, so I can just choose my favorite retailer. But not so fast….

While doing my research, I ended up going with a Canon, my second favorite camera, because my first choice Nikon was more expensive. They are both great cameras, so when it came to bottom line, I went with the lower price point. When I started looking for deals today, I decided to check out the Nikon for the hell of it. Guess what! It is marked down MORE than the Canon, making it the cheaper option. I ordered through B&H Photo, and with a bundling discount, got the camera and lens for less than the camera’s original price. Score!

Amazon should be your next stop for deals today. They have a Cyber Monday homepage with new deals added every 10 minutes. You may as well leave this up all day at your desk – I’m sure your boss will understand.

The interesting thing about these deals is that they all have time limits on them, and a limited supply. It’s like an Ebay auction and QVC all rolled into one. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you get free shipping on every order, and if you aren’t, you get free shipping when your order is over $35, so you could literally place an order every 10 minutes and never pay a dollar in shipping. If you do this, please comment below with your total number of orders because I think records can be broken today.

Amazon Sale Highlights: Everything. If you can’t find it on Amazon, you don’t need it. Really though, this is the site where you should compare prices if you find something you want elsewhere on the internet. 90% of the time (made-up statistic) Amazon has the lowest price.

I am ordering the kids’ toys from Amazon, and I am on the lookout for some really cool science stuff for my nephew, who is on track to be a physicist:

Target has the amazing Amazon beat on a few great items like the KitchenAid Mixer, clothes are buy one get one 50% off (who doesn’t love some Target clothes!), and something you might not associate with Christmas shopping: baby gear for the nursery.

They are also doing special add-ons to sale items, like throwing in gift cards or related products for free.

Express is doing 50% today – of EVERYTHING. I love their blouses for work, so I’ll pick up a couple of those today. They have great coats if you’re in the market.

Shutterfly has a deal for 50% off + an extra 25% using the code CYBER25

Check out this site for great travel deals, most of which you have to book today. There is one deal that extends until Orange Wednesday.

Wait, what? What is Orange Wednesday?? They are going to start running out of colors to describe all the sale days soon.

I gave you a few cyber pointers, but I’ll close with the most useful advice I can give you:

If you can dream it, you can buy it. You might have to do a little searching, but you can find almost anything on sale today.